Post war / cold war society

George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1948 as a chilling indictment of post war/cold war society. Since its publication in 1949, the book has been hailed as one of the 100 most influential in the modern Western literary tradition. The question must be put: Influential how: as a warning against totalitarianism; or, as a handbook for those in power today?